Serious Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Minuscule Hamlet Separated in Half by the Cold War Era

An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, attending the identical religious building and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole hamlet, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Locals were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they desired to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to care for their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and large car park – is expected to